"The Russian story telling tradition is one of the oldest and richest in the wrold. The astonishing variety and breadth of Russia's peoples, stretching from the Baltic coast to the furthest reaches of Siberia, contributed countless fantastic tales comprising a shared folk heritage. These stories, or skazki, were passed down orally from generation to generation, until finally recorded in print in the late eighteent century. They draw on the myths of a deep pagan past, a past in which the winters of the broad, windswept steppe held both an enchantment and a dread, a time in which the darkening forests cast longer shadows than they do today."

Not the best collection of stories I've ever read. The stories were interesting enough, but they could have been written better.